shafi hadi revisited - update

A few years ago I blogged about my favourite saxophonist: Shafi Hadi. The first five paragraphs of this post are lifted directly from that original piece with one or two minor amendments and edits. The rest is an update, what I’ve since discovered about this shadowy genius:

One of the great unsung heroes of the alto and tenor saxophones was a man named Curtis Porter. He’s probably better known as Shafi Hadi, perhaps having changed his name on religious grounds during the late 1950s.But even as Shafi Hadi, few will have encountered him because he appears to have enjoyed no more than the metaphorical 15 minutes of fame. By the middle 60s, he seems to have dropped into semi-obscurity.

I first heard him in about 1962 or 1963 when Mingus and his Tijuana Moods album erupted into my hitherto cloistered British-trad-jazz-revival consciousness. Suddenly I was listening to a sax player capable, in my opinion, of trouncing the great Bird himself.

His tone was cut of the best diamond, sharp yet plaintiff, stuffed full of 100 carat emotion and bluesy fire. Solos were considered and intelligent, delivered with exacting precision. Phrasing and intonation were often laconic; he eschewed the fusillades of notes. For him, his jazz was not about increasing the numbers of notes per second by running frenetically up and down the chords, but was more to do with turning short sentences and phrases into pithy sayings of expressive substance. Pauses were as significant as the notes themselves; somehow he stitched silence with sound to produce solos of the utmost beauty.

Little is known about him. He started playing in various R&B bands (before R&B become a corrupted concept) and I know for a while he was associated with Hank Mobley, recording on at least one album with him. His first recording venture with Mingus was “The Clown” in early 1957 (about 6 months after becoming a jazz player at the age of 26) and he was involved with the great bassist on at least seven albums until middle 1959.

During 1958 he collaborated with John Cassavetes on the sound track for the producer’s film “Shadows” in which Mingus was also involved. Cassavetes acted out the roles as Hadi improvised accompanying music. Cassavetes wrote: “It was terrific. He played the story of his life to music.” The actor also records that Hadi was married, was large in stature as well as creativity, and stood physically tall. Nat Hentoff in the liner notes for “The Clown” writes that Hadi had said after the recording: “I think more jazz groups should tell stories like Mingus does, instead of just playing notes and techniques.”

Update:

A rumour went around that he’d died of a heroin overdose in the early 70s, but a Wiki entry suggests he was still around on the music scene in 1975, and in 1977 he was reported to have collaborated with Mary Lou Williamson on her composition “Shafi” although typically the source is vague about the extent of his contribution. A couple of years later he was said to have worked in some way with Sue Mingus (Charles’ widow) to provide original scores of her late husband’s music.

In coda, I can’t help be struck by the similarity in tone and phrasing between Shafi and another brilliant alto sax player, Jackie McClean, especially on Mingus’ “Blues n Roots” album. Mingus was never a composer to look backwards; he always edged forward, so I’m surprised he employed a sideman sounding so much like an earlier one. Perhaps I’m wrong on this; I’m not technically minded with music. I’d be interested to hear expert views, and to know whether anyone has more information on what happened to such a skilled and gifted jazz musician.